Lot no. 323 •

There are additional 7% import fees (not tax, non deductible) that will be charged to all buyers. This includes also those buyers from outside the European Union.

2d. blue, plate 1, strip of four, LG-LJ, with large balanced margins all round, cancelled with four superb strikes of a black Maltese Cross, paying the 8d. outbound rate for a Ship Letter from the famous „Thomas MacLear, Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope“ correspondence, „APR  16  1842“ (Edinburgh) for dispatch, „18 APR 1842“ (London Foreign Branch) in transit on reverse and „PAID SHIP LETTER LONDON 18 AP 1842“ in red on front. A fantastic and ‚eye catching‘ Foreign Destination cover of the 1840, 2d. blue, one of just three such Ship Letters to the Cape recorded in the Karl Louis Card Index, all three being mailed between 14th and 18th  April 1842, this being the only cover with a strip of four, the other two frankied with the matching blocks of four B.P.A. certificate (2006)

Provenance:  Dr. Chan Chin Cheung Collection, H.R.Harmer, London, 29 May 1961, lot 79
Wills Collection, Harmer, 7 November 1989, lot 435 (mentioning ‚D.C. Gray' Collection as a further provenance)